I've been using PM for a while and trying to move all processing to ON1. Regardless of what direction I start in, all metadata syncs seamlessly between the two except color labels. I am using colors to flag what I am doing with the images, rather than rating.

From PM, to ON1, I have to Read Metadata, which is ok, but in my workflow, I find myself wanting to change colors in ON1 first and PM, is erratic at reading it, even after doing Embed metadata in On1.

Anyone else using a similar workflow? If I can't get this to work properly, I'll have to change to folders for this functionality.

BTW, this is in ON1 2018.

Also, PM is releasing v6 sometime before EOY - don't know if that will help.

You may have to experiment.On my Win10 box working with Nikon NEFs, Photo Mechanic (PM) appears to pick up color tag and caption changes I do in On1 Photo Raw 2018 (On1).

On1 does not pick up changes I do in PM. On1 does apparently read metadata from the raw file, once. If I close On1, delete the .on1 sidecar file, hack the XMP sidecar (remove some "onone" stuff) and start On1, it picks up changes made in PM.

In case you work with DNG-files, you should know that PM does NOT handle metadata in DNGs as a raw file; PM handles DNGs the same way it handles JPEGs. I hope this will change some day when Kirk and his co-workers think this through. Right now, some software that treats DNG as a raw file will never ever write metadata to it. Catch22: PM only reads DNG metadata from the DNG, not from a sidecar where a raw file application puts it.

By the way, the application Capture One (C1) is not On1 Photo Raw 2018.

yeah, this color label workflow evolved over time and probably outgrew itself anyway. I have switched to a folder system for those particular files which will probably help make it smoother while having both systems looking at smaller sets of images.

And re C1, don't know if the responder misspoke or misunderstood, but the problem was the same when I was testing with them. It seems, for some reason, that color labels is not handled like the rest of the metadata. Since 8 seems to be the max number of color labels across systems, a single bit of storage is all that would be required, but I'll just stay away from them for now.

...And re C1, don't know if the responder misspoke or misunderstood, but the problem was the same when I was testing with them. It seems, for some reason, that color labels is not handled like the rest of the metadata.

PM <-> C1 color label, star rating, caption (and more) work just fine, DNG-files being the exception I have faced.

I have 2 way editable data exchange to between PM and Photo Raw 2019. In the PM preferences in the general tab under color classes I pressed the 'lightening bolt' and picked Light Room. I'm just using Color Classes 1 thru 5, Red thru Purple. This corresponds with 6 thru 0 in Photo Raw.